§ 21.007.Recording of Testimony

A verification mechanism that exists because of what the court reporter can and cannot record.

On the court's or a party's motion, the court may order a video recording of a deaf witness's testimony and the interpreter's interpretation of that testimony, to use in verifying the transcription of the reporter's notes.

The reporter records the interpreter's spoken English, not the witness's signing. The transcript is therefore a record of the interpretation. If the interpretation was wrong, the transcript preserves the error and contains no trace of the original — there is nothing in the written record to check it against.

The video supplies that. It captures both the signed testimony and the interpretation, so the two can be compared.

Subsection (b): if a party requests, the clerk shall include the recording in the appellate record. The word is shall — where the recording exists and a party asks, it goes up.

That matters because an appellate court reviewing a challenge to the interpretation would otherwise be reading the same unverifiable transcript. Ordering the recording is discretionary; including an existing one is not.